I need to admit I've had problems really liking what I've heard from electrostatic headphones. I typically hear the treble as being hazy or overly airy. Well, I heard two e-stats while in Southern California that seemed to be changing that. One of them was HiFiMAN's Shangri-La Jr.

The Shangri-La Sr. at $50k is right out of my league, and unless it's the National Football, probably out of your league as well. Fortunately, with the recently available Shagri-La Jr. ($8000), HiFiMAN has dragged the priceand a number of key features and technologiesout of the stratosphere and planted it squarely into competition with other high-end electrostatic systems. Junior inherits from Senior: nano-particle coated sub-one micron thick diaphragm; precision 50 micron wire mesh stators; and nanometer thick dust cover to prevent arcing. The partner amplifier is built around four 6SN7N vacuum tubes.

I have no idea if it was show conditions, available music, or just the enormous price difference that might have biased my listening experiences, but I heard the Shangri-La Jr. as smoother and more organic sounding than my experience with its big brother. In fact, I heard it as quite competitive and better than expected relative to my other e-stat experiences...has me rethinking what they can do.

Who is the target audience for a headphone at this price? We need a campaign for ‘Real Prices’ perhaps? Well, they won’t sell many so perhaps this is just a design for demonstrating what can be done with a headphone perhaps.

For me, once $1500 was breached, I started to lose interest in these esoteric devices. I wish that as enthusiasts, we would not be so accepting of ridiculous pricing.

....Does your reply end up completely separated from the post you were replying to? I was trying to reply to Rabbit's post and clicked on that Reply link. Since there is no edit capability, I'm posting again.

Just reply GimmeCans, I’ll know it’s directed at me if you write ‘Rabbit’.

While I realise that high end gear does gain interest, I feel that it’s about a piece of gear that no one will own. Jeremy Clarkson does this in his car programme, where a manufacturer produces just one and they review it. Entertaining though I guess.